The Song of Significance: A New Manifesto for Teams

by Seth Godin

35. Kinko and Sleepy There’s an alternative to the top-down regime of compliance. When Paul Orfalea was building Kinko’s (which he sold to FedEx for more than two billion dollars), he said that his best technique for growing the business was simple: he would walk into one of their stores and ask someone there to tell him about an innovation they’d implemented that was working (and then he’d tell all the other stores about it). If you didn’t have an innovation to share, Paul let you know you needed to do better. When Harry Acker was building Sleepy’s (which his son sold to Mattress Firm for nearly a billion dollars), his best technique for growing the business was to call every store every day and ask, “What’s wrong?” and then fix the problem. The store manager who told me this story made it clear that if you didn’t have a problem to share, you were in trouble. Two sides of the same coin. It’s possible your team knows what’s up.